


More

by sanctuary_for_all



Series: Partners [55]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Feels, Fluff, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-05 18:58:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11019543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanctuary_for_all/pseuds/sanctuary_for_all
Summary: Steve finally realizes he has a future he needs to start worrying about.





	More

**Author's Note:**

> There is absolutely no radiation sickness in this universe, because I'm not a terrible writer (and I _really_ don't want to test Danny's power to hurt me from inside my own head). But you'll see some themes here you might see in fic that do acknowledge the radiation sickness, because I hope Steve would come to some of those insights on his own. 
> 
> And yes, I know this contradicts "The Rest of My Life," the fic that follows it in the series. Just consider them both different possibilities for an equally happy future.

Steve’s knee hurt.

This was, even he could admit, not that unusual. He’d been in pain a lot, over his life, all through his time in the Navy and as head of 5-0. You learned to work past the pain, to push it aside so you could finish the job you had to do, and by the time he’d gotten to this point in his life Steve had gotten particularly good at breaking out of hospitals. (There had been one base doctor, early on, that had started simply handcuffing him to the bed whenever he got brought in for something. Steve wasn’t sure whether he wanted to track the man down and let him have a massive Steve-is-insane bitch session with Danny, or make sure the two never, ever knew the other existed).

Not that this injury, at this particular moment, was worth a hospital visit. It probably wasn’t even worth the fussing Danny was doing, but trying to stop Danny Williams from fussing was nearly as impossible as trying to stop him from complaining about something – it wasn’t going to happen, and you’d just wear yourself out trying.

Besides, Steve kind of liked being fussed at.

“Here.” Danny carried over an ice pack from the fridge, setting it down on Steve’s knee and placing Steve’s hand over it. His leg was already propped up on one of the kitchen chairs, which Danny had insisted on after Steve refused to stay on the couch in the living room. “You will keep your leg up, and this ice pack on it, until I say you can stop. I know getting all matchy-matchy is supposedly a cute thing for spouses to do, but a messed-up knee is one of the few injuries you _didn’t_ have and I’d kind of like to keep it that way.”

“It’s just a sprain, Danno,” Steve said, trying to be comforting as he watched his husband’s face for signs of real worry. He couldn’t see any, at least not anything serious, but it was always better to be safe than sorry. Besides, the cold pack felt pretty good. “I’ll be fine.”

“’I’ll be fine,’ he says.” Danny set the saucepan down on the stove before turning round and giving Steve a pointed look. “The fact that you’d say the same thing if you were _missing a limb_ makes it so the people in your life don’t believe you when you say that.” He shook his head. “I swear, sometimes I think the reason Brandon wants to become a doctor is so he can help put you back together in your old age.”

It was, Steve could admit to himself, probably true. Brandon had been five when he’d carefully laid dinosaur bandaids over all of Steve’s immediately accessible old scars, and Steve had kept them on for a week because of the big, worried eyes Brandon got every time one fell off. He only did it to the new injuries, now, but the big, worried eyes were still the same.

Grace was living on campus at UHM – she hadn’t wanted to be _that_ far away for school, but she said that she and Danno both needed a certain amount of plausible deniability during her freshman year – so he didn’t see her worried face quite as much. Before she’d left, though, she’d had a long talk with Danny making him promise to call her immediately if Steve did something that got him sent to the hospital.  The intensity in her voice had made Steve’s chest hurt a hell of a lot more than his knee was right now.

“I’m taking better care of myself, though, than I was,” Steve said out loud, pulling himself out of his thoughts. “Right?”

Danny, who had pulled several things out of the fridge while Steve had stopped paying attention, sighed. “Yes, but since you weren’t taking care of yourself at _all_ before that’s still only relative. You’ll actually notice when you’re bleeding now, and if I or one of the kids are watching you’ll do something about it, but I still don’t think it connects in your head that _you_ should be the one upset that you’re bleeding.” He pulled the carrots out of the fridge, which meant he was making minestrone, and started chopping.

Which was Steve’s job, damn it. He waved a hand over. “Bring those over here. I can chop without getting up at all, I promise.”

Danny looked heavenward, his “why do I put up with such suffering” face, but brought the celery, an extra knife and cutting board over. “Consider this your version of a gold star for actually _not_ standing for five seconds. If I see you even _thinking_ about putting weight on that knee, I’ll lock you in a room with nothing but the home shopping network and no access to a phone.”

When the injury was serious, Danny usually threatened to sedate him to keep him from doing anything stupid. The really big injuries didn’t get any threats at all, but the haunted look Danny got when he thought Steve wasn’t looking was more than enough, all on its own. He’d gotten a lot more careful about those big injuries – there hadn’t been any for a few years now – but sometimes you didn’t get to decide things like that.

So the people Steve loved most spent their lives bracing themselves, all so Steve could grit his teeth and pretend he wasn’t in pain.

He started chopping, possibilities taking shape in his head. “Do you ever think about retiring early?”

“Of course I do, the same way I think about magically winning the lottery and pineapple being declared illegal.” Danny gestured as if the things he was talking about were sitting on an imaginary shelf next to him. “I have a whole little collection of things I fantasize about that I know will never, ever happen.”

It wasn’t exactly a happy answer, but it made sense – Danny always saw the ways something wouldn’t work out. It was Steve's job to believe things would work out. “I think we could pull it off.” He went over the numbers in his mind, the same way he would the details of any plan. “You hit your 20 a few years ago, and I've got my Navy pension along with my savings. It might get a little tight sometimes, but we could do it.”

That got Danny’s full attention, and he lifted his head to give Steve a "you've got to be kidding me" look. "No we couldn’t, because then that would leave you running around getting into firefights and leaping off of tall buildings without me. As long as there is breath in my body, that is _never_ going to happen.”

“Of course not.” Steve's brow lowered. “I can't retire from the HPD, because I'm nowhere near my 20, so I'd just quit. I'm sure we'd end up finding something else to do anyway – you know as well as I do that we'd both end up getting bored if we just sat at home and did nothing.”

The disbelief on Danny's face slowly transformed into shock. “You're actually serious.”

That threw Steve a little. "Do you not like the idea?"

“Oh no – I love the idea. I would marry the idea if I wasn't already happily married to you.” Danny set down the knife, still looking like he was having trouble processing what was happening. “But I always assumed your plan was to keep fighting evil until you fell over dead at some point. I’d planned on waiting until we were in our 60s, then having the governor write up some kind of executive order that would make it actually illegal for you to keep working.”

Ah. Steve wanted to protest that it hadn’t been a _plan_ , really – he’d never actually thought about it – but Danny wasn’t as wrong as Steve would have liked him to be. When he’d been with the Navy, the SEALS in particular, he’d always assumed he’d die on the job at some point. A bullet would hit something vital, he wouldn’t be able to quite outrace a bomb, someone would have a knife, and he’d run out of time. The military would take care of his funeral, and that would be that.

It hadn’t been like that for years, but he’d always been good at not thinking about things he didn’t want to think about. So he’d just sailed along on his default setting, never realizing he had a future he needed to start thinking about.

Not wanting to say any of that to Danny, he lifted a hand helplessly. “It wasn’t because I _wanted_ to. I just...” He hesitated, trying to find the right words. “It didn’t hit me that there was another option until now.”

Danny stared at him for a long moment, looking like he couldn’t decide whether to cry or hit something, then scrubbed his hands across his face. “Okay,” he said finally, sounding slightly strangled. Then he cleared his throat. “That’s... we’re gonna just set that aside right now, and we’ll focus on the fact that you know you’d miss it if you stopped working for 5-0. You’re a superhero _and_ an adrenaline junkie, and unless you start volunteering in a war zone or something there isn’t a hobby out there that’ll cut it.” He paused, expression sharpening. “Don’t volunteer in a war zone.”

Steve smiled a little. “I can’t. You made a rule that I’m no longer allowed to leave the country without you, remember?”

Danny relaxed, his own lips curving upward a little. “I knew that would come in handy again.” Then his expression turned serious, and he crossed the room to the kitchen table. Lifting Steve’s leg, he sat down on the seat before putting Steve’s foot back down on his lap. “I mean it, though.” He stroked a hand along Steve’s ankle. “I love the idea of no one shooting at us anymore, but I don’t want to stop you from being you.”

Steve took a deep breath, thinking about all the people he and Danny had helped since they started 5-0. It was important, and he’d loved being a part of it, but the team would still be out there protecting the island whether or not he and Danny were there. Steve wasn’t arrogant enough to think that he could save the island _better_ than other people, especially now that he was getting older. He wasn’t quite as fast as he used to be, and his reflexes had slowed down. The older he got, the worse both would get, and dying early enough to avoid that was no longer an acceptable option.

Besides, there were other things he needed to do. Finally chasing the worry out of his family’s eyes would be the first step, but there were so many other things that would come after. Taking his family on a real vacation, showing them everything he’d missed when he’d been busy traveling the world with the Navy. Watching Grace graduate college, and Brandon graduate high school. Dancing at their weddings, and holding their children in his arms. Making Danny believe once and for all in happy endings. Figuring out if he was good at anything other than saving the day and loving his family.

He couldn’t wait to get started.

“There’s more to me than just the job,” he said softly, throat tightening as the truth of what he was saying settled deep into his chest. Then he grinned. “Since it’s your fault I know that, it’s only fair you help me figure out what to do with it.”

“You think I’m worried about that?” The words were flippant, but Danny’s voice was thick with emotion.  “I spent enough years trying to beat the idea that you matter through that thick skull of yours. If you think I’m not going to enjoy the results, you’re— Hey!” The last word was more of a squawk as Steve pulled his foot off of Danny’s lap. “I _told_ you not to—”

He stopped talking when Steve hooked his other ankle around the leg of Danny’s chair, pulling him closer. “I’m not putting any weight on it,” Steve murmured as he leaned in for a kiss. “But you were too far away.”

When they broke apart, Danny grinned. “I’m still not going parachuting.” He looked as relaxed and happy as Steve had ever seen him.

Steve drank in the sight as he leaned in for another kiss. “We’ll work up to it.”  

**Author's Note:**

> Come check out my [original fiction,](https://jennifferwardell.wixsite.com/mybooks) my [blog,](http://jennifferwardell.blogspot.com) or say hi to me on [Tumblr](http://sanctuaryforalluniverses.tumblr.com)!


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